Ban on the importation of turtles and frogs

Last week, the California State Fish & Game Commission unanimously voted to end future importation of live turtles and frogs for the State’s live animal food markets. By this 5-to-zero vote, the Commission has instructed the Department of Fish & Game not to issue any future permits for importing these animals for sale as food.

While neither the Commission nor the Department is especially well known for doing the right thing, this is an excellent decision, bringing to a positive end a 16 year long battle on this issue.

This will stop the annual importation into California of over two million American bullfrogs (a species not native to this State, most of the importation has been commercially raised animals coming from Taiwan) and an estimated 300,000 or more red eared slider turtles (also non-native, the grown up version of that little turtle so popular in the pet trade a few decades ago).

Interesting case of strange bedfellows, this successful battle was waged by a combination of animal welfare advocates, environmentalists, public health professionals, and hunting groups. That powerful patchwork quilt of an argument included the following bits of cloth: the way in which these animals were transported, housed and eventually cooked (often live in a frying pan or stewpot) constitutes cruelty by just about anyone’s standards; large numbers of these non-native animals are increasingly finding their ways into our own waters, displacing native wildlife; numerous studies of animals purchased at the food markets have proven positive for diseases which can prove troubling and even fatal in humans including E. coli, salmonella, pasturella, giardia, and blood parasites.

The ban does not apply to permits for the exotic pet trade. That’s a battle for another day.